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Would seem that whoever was in the Promo department at Columbia was given free range to create hype material for It Was Written in 1996 as the Escobar EP also looks like a boot and has the F/W in the run outs.

It's definitely an official promo record as I got my copy from a local Indie Rock record shops closing down basement sale and they were sent it by the label. They had hundreds of 90's promo Hip Hop records down there as they took the not for resale thing literally.

Large Professor: “I was involved in an earlier version of [‘Life is Like a Dice Game’] where he didn’t actually name it ‘Dice Game.’ We did it over the same sample as Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s ‘Get Money,’ the original [version]. It was earlier though. I had hooked it up. Everyone was [still] going to those record conventions, so records would come in waves. And I was catching a lot of those records earlier, and knowing to freak them early. But it never [was released with that beat]. I think that’s the same session we did 'Understanding.'

“That [sample] was Biz’s idea. Biz called me one day, and was like, ‘Yo! You know what would be dope? To get Nas to rhyme over that Grover Washington joint.’ And I was like, ‘Word? You think so?’ And then I called Nas, and was like, ‘Yo, this is what Biz said.’ And he was like, ‘Then we gotta do it.’

“So I hooked the beat up, and we went to the Greene Street Studios, and knocked it out. We never mixed it or took it through the whole process, it was just a flinger. But Grandmaster Vic was there, Biz was there, AZ. Raekwon came through [to hang out]. Nas was just starting to work on It Was Written. Those were sessions between Illmatic and It Was Written. That was one of the first sessions when he started getting in the swing of working again.”